# Log Your Laravel API Routes With Middleware

From time-to-time, you will happen upon a problem between your frontend and API that you can't quite see. A `dd()` in your controller or a `console.log()` in your frontend just doesn't seem to cut it and the problem seems out of reach. Luckily, Laravel provides you with a way to see the request as it hits your API, and that is through middleware. 

**First Steps:**

- In your terminal, go to where your project's API is located, and type `php artisan make:middleware LogRoute`. This will create a file in app/Http/Middleware.
- If you haven't already, [download Postman](https://www.postman.com/downloads/). It will help you to test your API without having to go through your frontend.

**The Meat:**
- In your LogRoute.php, import the Log Facade by typing 
`use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Log` at the top of your file.
- Next, in our `handle()` function, we'll need to first ensure that our request can pass unimpeded between handlers. 
```
public function handle(Request $request, Closure $next){
    $response = $next($request)
    ...
}
```
- Next, we'll need to tell our Middleware to stop running if our app environment isn't local. We'll do that with an if statement: 
`if (app()->environment('local'))`.
- Now we can finish up our middleware by making an array of our request and response and logging that data. Our response is what's most important, as it will have a stack trace to help us debug.
```
public function handle(Request $request, Closure $next){
    $response = $next($request);

    if (app()->environment('local')){
        $data = [
            'request' => $request->all(),
            'response' => $response->getContent()
        ];
        Log::info(json_encode($data));
    }
        
    return $response;
}
```

**Finishing Up:**
- To use our middleware, we first have to register it. Go to Kernel.php in your app/Http folder and scroll all the way down to `$routeMiddleware`. When you're there, add this line: `'log.route' => \App\Http\Middleware\LogRoute::class,`. 
- Now go to your API routes and place `->middleware('log.route')` at the end of the route that you want to test.

**The End:**
- Test your API by making a request with Postman. 
- Go to storage/logs/laravel.log to see what's happening. 

**One More Thing:**
- You can add more methods in your middleware to test requests, such as `$request->getMethod()` which will tell you the type of request method that hit the API (POST, GET, etc.) and `$request->getUri()` which will tell you the source of the request.


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